Only 5-14% of U.S. High School girls will consider a women’s college. At Smith College there are many opportunities to meet boys – in class and out! There are 10,000 male 5-College students close to Smith College – Tim Loftus, a student from UMASS Amherst, who we see here in ESS110 – Intro to Sports Coaching, is one of them.

If you play squash and are considering a top academic college, why not choose the best of both worlds? Studies show that academic and leadership opportunities are great at a women’s college: at Smith you can also socialize with males!

The CSA Ann Wetzel Award was given on Saturday to the women’s college player who started playing squash at college – not even a single lesson or game is allowed in order to qualify for the award – Smith college’s Clair Oblamski!

Clair only actually played for two and a half semesters, making her achievement even more remarkable. She beat last year’s winner, Amherst’s Mimi Bell 3-0 just before her junior semester abroad in Denmark (where she had no access to squash courts). A captain on both the Smith College Tennis and Squash teams, Clair played won her first match at the #7 spot in the fall of 2009, and her last match at the #2 spot, leading her team to a 5-4 win over William Smith in the 2012 CSA Epps Cup final at Harvard University on February 26, 2012. More specific details on her progress can be found here. Here is a short interview with Clair after her first college squash match – at the end of her first week of squash:

Clair had beaten the second place nominee, Mount Holyoke College’s Marie Ozanne 3-1 at the Wesleyan Invitational in early December 2011.

Clair interned at StreetSquash in the summer of 2011, and although she is a CSA Scholar-Athlete and a double major in Neuroscience and Psychology, following graduation, she will be seeking a position with one of the NUSEA programs.

A historical note that Smith College has had more Ann Wetzel winners than any other college in the CSA since its inception in 1995:

1998: Karen Carniol (Wesleyan College)**

1999: Kanta Murali (Smith College)

2005: Ashley Kilgore (Smith College)

2006: Jennifer Recht (Smith College)

2012: Clair Oblamski (Smith College)

**Note that Smith’s Patty Jang, a 1998 nominee, did in fact beat the 1998 Wetzel Award winner according to CSA Ranking Rules (2-1 overall having won the most recent match), was a three-year co-captain of the squash team, and an exemplary sport with excellent technique (shot-maker style of play).**

The team’s other graduating co-captain is buy studying for MCATs to get into Med School;

Catie Blunt, Xi Zhao, Szilvi B. Kiss were all working in the Smith Science labs (Smith has one of the top science programs in the country) – Catie managed to flood one of the labs she was working in (sorry – no pics!) – Northampton is a beautiful place to spend the summer!

Clair Oblamski is interning at StreetSquash in New york City!

We will update what everyone is doing in college squash in our next post! In the meantime if you have any questions about college squash or Smith College academics, drop head coach Tim Bacon a line (tbacon@smith.edu) – Tim has been busy doing professional development including a) working on a second strength training qualification Tim is the only College Squash Coach who is a NSCA Certified Strength & Conditioning Specialist; b) he filmed the finals of the Women’s Junior World team championships between Egypt and the U.S.A. and will be analyzing the matches using Dartfish (he is the only Dartfish Trained Head College Squash coach) and publishing a report of the tactical tendencies of the two countries.

Lots of progress and improvement, but too early in the season to score against the seasoned Northeastern team in Boston today. The team did not win a match (nor a game) but fought very hard and there were some great rallies. First year Catie Blunt came closest with a great second game, coming back from a large deficit losing 10-8 in the final moments. With only seven full years of squash experience on the squad the Smith players are showing great promise! And they had a great lunch at Subway – they were so polite that the Subway manager offered free cookies all around!

And here are the scores for the Smith College’s top nine (although another four played exhibition matches against the NorthEastern players: Luisa Tsang, Sarah Lentz, Kailin Weng, Julia Howald):

On Saturday, October 18th 16 Smith College students (and 1 alum in the Pro Division) showed up for the 2008 Smith College Racketlon – and everyone had a great time playing ping-pong, badminton, squash and tennis at Smith College’s great indoor faciltities!

Team 1 (Julia, Su, Sarah, Jess) won three of the four disciplines to win the tournament (56-39; 15-5,15-8,11-15,15-11; so +17) in the final against Team 3 (Mercedes, Jasmine, Guyman, Shanita). In the Pro Division Englander Andy Stenson narrowly beat local Smith Alum Erin Robson, losing to her in squash (15-11, 15-2, 12-15, ret.), before succumbing to host Coach Tim Bacon in a closely fought final (5-15, 15-5, 15-4, 11-15; +7).

Smith Racketlon Tournament T-Shirt

All participants got a very cool t-shirt! Contact Tim if you would like to purchase one at the cost price of $7.50.

You can watch some of the play on the Smith Squash YouTube TV Channel:

Only four of the Smith College Squash team are staying on campus during the beautifully sunny and warm (average temp in the 70’s!) Fall Recess in Northampton. Everyone else will be on the road – but if they have their Iphones or laptops and internet access they can watch a great YouTube match played recently between current world #1 Nicol David from Malaysia and former 5-time World Champ Sarah Fitzgerald from Australia.

We do not have any great local female squash in Northampton, so this is a wonderful opportunity to keep the squash neurons going (and yes – we know that sport imagery improves actual sport performance).

We will not give away the result, but note that Sarah is now 40 to Nicol’s 25, and it is hoped that the Smith Squash Team are all playing 20 years from now (imagine how good they will be).